Carolyn and Eve shook their heads to confirm what Phyllis said.
“I just met the lady last week,” Sam said.
“And as far as I know, I never met her,” Roy added.
“So you don’t know if she was married?” Latimer asked.
Phyllis said, “I’m pretty sure she was divorced. I heard her mention her ex-husband once. But I have no idea how long ago they split up.”
“I can find out about that,” Latimer said with a confident nod. “Anytime it’s a crime of passion, you’ve got to look at the spouse . . . or the ex-spouse, as the case may be.”
He wasn’t telling Phyllis anything she didn’t already know, but she was curious enough to ask, “What makes you think it was a crime of passion?”
“Somebody picked up a ceramic gingerbread man in a Christmas outfit and busted it over her head,” Latimer said bluntly. “It’s kind of hard to plan something like that. Throw in the fact that the attack took place on your front porch,
after
Ms. Hallerbee had rung the doorbell, and it looks to me like the guy was in a hurry and just grabbed whatever was handy.”
“Maybe he was trying to rob her,” Roy suggested.
“Pretty doubtful under those circumstances. Her purse was still there on the porch where she dropped it. If it was a robbery, he would have grabbed it when he ran off.”
Roy nodded. “Yes, I suppose that makes sense.”
“It’s the work of a lunatic,” Carolyn said. “It has to be. I mean . . . he hit her with a dressed-up gingerbread man.”
“Maybe,” Latimer said. “We’ll find out. You can count on that.” He closed his notebook and tucked it away. “I think I’ve got all I need for now. Are you folks all right? Anybody need any medical attention?”
Phyllis and the others all shook their heads.
“I’m afraid our investigators will be out there for a while, maybe most of the night,” Latimer went on. “You’ll have to come and go through the garage for now, until I let you know it’s all right to use the front door again.”
“I understand,” Phyllis said.
He gave her a speculative look. “Yeah, I figured you would, Mrs. Newsom. Given your history and all.”
So he hadn’t heard of the Christmas Jingle Bell Tour of Homes, but he did know that she had been involved in several murder investigations in the past. Well, that was his line of work, after all, Phyllis told herself.
When she didn’t say anything, Latimer continued. “I’ll be in touch if I need to ask any more questions. Mr. Porter, do you have a cell phone number where I can reach you?”
Roy took out his wallet and slid a business card from it. He handed it to Latimer and said, “My number’s on there.”
“Thanks,” Latimer said as he put the card in his pocket. “I’d tell you folks to have a pleasant evening . . . but I suppose it’s too late for that.”
He gave them a curt nod and walked out through the kitchen and garage.
When the detective was gone, Sam asked, “Should we leave all the Christmas lights on or turn them off?”
“Leave them on,” Phyllis said. “That’s the way it was when the police got here, and I’m sure they’d prefer that everything be left just the way they found it for now.” She looked out the picture window and saw that the crowd of onlookers had dispersed. The neighbors would have found out by now what had happened. They always did when some catastrophe or tragedy occurred, even though the police wouldn’t have made any comment. Bad news always found a way to travel, and usually pretty fast . . .
Chapter 7
B
ecause of that, Phyllis wasn’t the least bit surprised when her phone rang the next morning and her son, Mike, was on the other end.
“Mom,” he asked, “are you all right?”
“Of course I am,” Phyllis told him.
“I heard that Georgia Hallerbee was attacked on your front porch.”
“Do you know how she’s doing?” Phyllis asked. “I called the hospital a little while ago, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Sorry, I don’t have any idea. According to the paper she was in a coma at press time.”
Phyllis had seen the same story in the newspaper this morning. It had been pretty skimpy on details, just giving Georgia’s name and saying that she had been attacked and was in the hospital in serious condition. The police had held back the details of the attack, as they usually did, and the story hadn’t mentioned Phyllis’s address, just the street name and which block it was. She was grateful for that. Her name had already been mentioned in connection with various crimes many more times than she would have liked.
“How about you?” Mike went on. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, of course. The man was gone by the time I opened the door.”
“But just barely. He must have run off into the shadows as soon as he attacked Ms. Hallerbee. Too bad all those Christmas lights weren’t on when it happened. Somebody might have seen him if they were.”
Phyllis had thought about that. The timing of the whole thing had been a matter of seconds. With all the shadows from the trees that grew thickly along both sides of the street, Georgia’s assailant would have had time to dash away from the porch before the lights came on, but just barely. She wondered if anybody driving along the street or looking out a window in another house might have caught a glimpse of him. It was possible. She could ask around . . .
No, the police would do that, she reminded herself. They would conduct a canvass of the entire neighborhood, asking if anyone had seen or heard anything unusual the night before. It wasn’t her job.
“I’m sure the police will find whoever did this,” she said.
“Yeah, and it’s not your job to do it,” Mike said, unknowingly echoing the very thought that had just gone through her head.
“You know that getting mixed up in those other cases wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to do.”
“Maybe not, but I’ve heard rumors that Ralph Whitmire isn’t very happy about the way you’ve solved those murders in the past.”
“Chief Whitmire has always been very nice to me,” Phyllis pointed out. “He’s always seemed grateful when I figured out what happened.”
“That’s because he’s a decent guy. But you can’t blame him when a retired schoolteacher catches more killers than his police department does!”
“Oh, now, that can’t be true. Sometimes months go by when I don’t—”
Phyllis stopped, realizing that she wasn’t making a very strong argument by saying that sometimes months went by without her solving a murder.
And in this case, it hadn’t even been a month yet since that awful business at the Harvest Festival.
“The detective who came here last night seemed to be a very competent man,” she resumed. “His name was Latimer. Warren Latimer, I believe. Do you know him?”
“No, but I’ve heard of him. I think he used to be on the job down in Austin or San Antonio, somewhere like that. Real hard . . . uh . . . hard-nosed guy.”
Phyllis knew that Mike had been about to use a slightly cruder term when he caught himself. She said, “He seemed nice enough. Very businesslike.”
“Well, that’s good. Maybe he’ll catch whoever did this without any problem. I hope so. In the meantime, if there’s anything you need me to do, just let me know.”
“All right.”
They said their good-byes and hung up. Phyllis looked out the window at the front yard. The crime-scene tape was still in place, even though all the police had been gone since sometime after midnight. With all the decorations on the lawn and in the trees, the yellow tape was actually a little hard to see. It was almost like grim tinsel strung here and there.
Carolyn was out doing some Christmas shopping, and Eve and Roy were house hunting again. Sam was in the garage, staining those bookshelves. Phyllis didn’t like being left alone in the house with her thoughts. In order to distract herself, she went out into the kitchen and started thinking about the appetizers she would serve at Eve’s bridal shower on the day before Christmas. That seemed like an odd time for a shower, but it was Eve’s business, not hers, Phyllis told herself. It did seem, though, that they were rushing things a little, and she couldn’t help but wonder if that was Eve’s idea or Roy’s.
Something else was odd, she thought, and that was the way Roy had shown up the night before only minutes after Georgia was attacked. He had been quick to point out to Warren Latimer that he hadn’t been there when the incident happened. But he could have parked somewhere down the street, followed Georgia up onto the porch, grabbed the gingerbread man, struck the blow with it, and then run back to his SUV. After that it would have been easy to drive up in a hurry and pretend to be worried about Eve . . .
“And why would he have done that?” Phyllis muttered aloud to herself. As Roy had told Latimer, he had never even met Georgia Hallerbee, and as far as Phyllis knew, that was true. She was letting her imagination run away with itself. She had gotten too much in the habit of questioning people’s motives and the things they said. Just because Roy hadn’t talked a lot about his background didn’t make him an attempted murderer, for goodness’ sake!
The kitchen door opened, breaking into Phyllis’s haphazard thoughts, and Sam leaned in to say, “There’s a lady out here lookin’ for you, Phyllis.”
Phyllis didn’t know who it could be, but a visitor would be a welcome distraction right now. Putting a smile on her face, she stepped out into the garage as Sam moved back from the door. Both garage doors were raised to let in light and fresh air, and that was necessary because the smell of the stain Sam was putting on the bookshelves was sharp and not very pleasant.
The woman waiting in the garage, next to Phyllis’s Lincoln, was middle-aged and heavyset, with short, curly blond hair and glasses. Phyllis recognized her but couldn’t recall her name or where she knew the woman from.
“Mrs. Newsom? I’m Claudia Fisk. I was working with poor Georgia on the Jingle Bell Tour.”
“Of course.” Phyllis reached out to take her hand. “You’re always one of the volunteers at the Peach Festival, aren’t you?”
Claudia Fisk smiled. “That’s right. I guess I have too much time on my hands, so I try to devote it to good works.”
“More people should do that. Please, come in. I’m sorry we have to go through the garage.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I saw all the . . . all the crime-scene tape around the front porch and knew I shouldn’t disturb anything up there.”
“The police have promised we can use the porch again sometime, but they haven’t said when,” Phyllis explained as she led Claudia into the kitchen. “We’ll go into the living room—”
“We can sit here at the kitchen table and talk, if you’d like,” Claudia suggested. “That’s always more homey, I guess you’d say.”
Phyllis couldn’t argue with that. She smiled and said, “There’s still some coffee, if you’d like a cup.”
“Please.”
Phyllis poured for both of them and got out some cookies. She had plenty of all the cookies left over, since there hadn’t been any visitors to serve them to the night before. Well, other than the police, she corrected herself, but she hadn’t thought to offer them anything. She’d been too upset to remember her manners.
“This is really good,” Claudia said as she took another bite of a gingerbread-boy cookie.
Phyllis didn’t want to rush her. She was sure Claudia was here because of what had happened to Georgia, or possibly about the Jingle Bell Tour, but she would get around to it in her own manner and her own time.
“I wish I was here just to enjoy the visit,” Claudia said after a couple of minutes, “but I’m afraid it’s not that pleasant. All of us who worked on the Jingle Bell Tour this year are very upset and worried about Georgia.”
“I’m sure you are,” Phyllis said with a nod. “So am I.”
“I . . . that is, all of us . . . we were hoping you could tell me more about what happened. There weren’t very many details in the newspaper story this morning. I’m sort of the . . . uh . . . delegate for the whole group.”
Phyllis couldn’t blame Georgia’s friends and coworkers for being concerned and curious. She said, “Maybe it would be easier if you told me what you already know.”
“Just what was in the paper,” Claudia said. “And what the police told us last night when the tour got here. By that time we couldn’t even get onto the block. There was a police car at both ends. Carl . . . that’s Carl Winthrop, another of the volunteers, asked the officer what was going on, and he told us that someone had been hurt in an accident. Then this morning we found out it was Georgia and . . . and . . .” Claudia lowered her voice. “The paper made it sound like it wasn’t an accident. Someone attacked her. It must have been here, and all the crime-scene tape confirms it.”
Phyllis didn’t confirm or deny anything just yet. Instead she asked, “What happened to the rest of the tour?”
“Oh, we went on with it, of course. I’m sorry we had to skip your house. From what I could see outside, it must have been just lovely.”
Phyllis sighed and nodded. “I’d like to think so. I guess now we’ll never know, though.”
“Unless you’re part of the tour next year.”
Phyllis sipped her coffee. She hadn’t thought about that.
“I mean, you already have all the lights and decorations,” Claudia went on. “Of course, it’s a
lot
of work putting them up and taking them down. Some people actually hire companies to do that, you know. Quite a few of them, in fact, including some of the homes on our tour. I like the ones that the homeowners do themselves, though. It just seems so much more personal that way, you know.”
“Yes, it does,” Phyllis agreed. “I’ll have to give it some thought.”
“I understand. After what happened, you might not want to take part. Anyway, can you tell me more about what happened ?”
Phyllis suddenly wondered if Claudia was really part of the tour, or if that was just a ruse to ask questions. Some people took an unhealthy interest in the details of a crime, particularly, in Phyllis’s experience, a crime committed against a woman.